


A Quiet Truth

by K_Popsicle



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pre-Slash, Truth Serum, away mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25443001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Popsicle/pseuds/K_Popsicle
Summary: Sometimes dust is just dust, and sometimes it messes with your biology and makes you tell the truth. This is one of those second times.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 12
Kudos: 171
Collections: Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Yellow Team





	A Quiet Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aohatsu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aohatsu/gifts).



Spock wakes with a start, head resting against the top of Jim’s head. He’s surprised enough to sit upright in a quick jerk of motion that wakes the man leaning against him.

“Spock,” Jim grips Spock’s thigh to steady himself and as he comes into awareness. Spock watches the forest around them alert and cautious. He had not been tired, had not felt the need to sleep while Jim was injured and he suspects foul play.

“We are on Atrias Prime still,” Spock instructs. They had been stranded by a storm in the stratosphere which had done little more than rain dust particles across the area, disrupt transporter sensors and communications. Scans read the dust as inert but Spock sets about brushing it from his skin and clothes until he goes to brush off his right leg and realises that Jim is still holding onto his thigh. He pauses and decides that perhaps the dust on his right leg can remain for the time being.

Jim pulls himself together piece by piece, slower for the injury he sustained when a ledge had broken unexpectedly below his feet, but never dulled, “Have we made contact with the crew?” he checks.

Spock opens his communicator and attempts the hail, but there is no response. “It appears the storm has also caused an interruption to our communications,” he advises. Jim, pressed against his side, tries to sit up, and Spock holds him in place.

“Spock?”

“It’s best not to put undue strain on your injuries, Captain,” Spock explains when he feels Jim’s surprise. Humans are strange creatures who give far too many clues about what they’re thinking. Usually Jim was better at hiding them, but pressed along Spock’s side he has no shields. Spock is curious about the kind of insight that allows him but that is an extra benefit and not the aim.

“Are you surprised by my actions or repulsed by them?” Spock asks without meaning to. Again he feels Jim’s body and the details of his response. It lends Spock no more insight except to know his words have received a reaction. That’s understandable considering he himself had not meant to say them.

“As surprised as I am by you asking.”

“The first need not surprise you, Captain, as moving will aggravate your injury and there is no need to move for me as I am quite comfortable with you where you are, the second is more concerning as it suggests a lack of control of my own oral facilities.”

“I’d like to know more about your oral facilities,” the Captain says apropos of nothing, and Spock remembers the hand on his thigh, the man’s injuries, and then the dust that has spent some hours falling on them from the stratosphere. The tension he feels from the Captain is hardly surprising, and instead of allowing the man to move away from Spock and injure himself further Spock stands. He is painfully aware of the hand on his thigh sliding away due to his own movements and quashes that attention and its irrelevance.

Spock shakes more of the dust out of his hair and off his clothes, but it sticks tenaciously. If he cannot remove it, he must discern the effects of it instead.

“Did you mean to say that, Jim?” Spock asks a few steps away and looking at the forest, he’s trying to be analytical but the shock of the words- the implication of the words continue to cycle back into the forefront of his mind and blindside him.

“Not even a little,” Jim says in that way that means he’s trying to solve the problem himself.

Spock steadied himself to ask, “And did you mean what you said?” When no reply comes Spock turns to take in his friend.

Jim cracked several ribs in the fall, the exact number Spock of which was unsure. He had also slept through a dust storm and like everything around them was covered in a layer of the reddish dust. Spock wants to brush the dust aside, as he would for any other crewman but doesn’t think he has the detached professionalism necessary to do it right now with his thoughts churned up by Jim’s words.

“Captain,” Spock takes a step closer, and Jim’s expression flits from surprise, to panic, then to a solid resigned determination. It is the kind of expression that Jim wears when pushed into a corner to act with violence rather than diplomacy. Spock braces himself.

“I meant them, Spock, but I didn’t want to say them.”

Which Spock assumed from his cagey response. He fights the inappropriate flush of excitement that crawls up his neck and addresses the situation like any other, with calm cold logic.

“It would appear we have been compromised by the dust, perhaps some sort of chemical reaction after it reached the troposphere that rendered it reactive. It appears to have had no other effects on us but I will leave that to Dr McCoy to determine when we return to the Enterprise.” Spock draw out his communicator and attempts contact again with no reply, then steps to their left and back again.

“Are you embarrassed, Spock?” Jim asks after some more pacing.

Without thinking Spock says, “Entirely.”

Jim makes a noise, surprised, amused- Spock can’t tell because he has turned away to try and compose himself. It is quite possible he does not like this planet at all.

“I shouldn’t have asked you that, Spock,” Jim apologises quickly.

“It is not a question dissimilar to ones you have asked me before, Captain,” Spock keeps his back to Jim.

“No, but I knew you had to answer and we’re all entitled to secrets,” the self-reprimand is thick in Jim’s voice and Spock, who knows his Captain better than any other man or Vulcan, turns back to face him calmly and steadily.

“I have already asked you things you did not wish to answer, Captain,” he explains because it is imperative that Jim not bare the weight of this situation on his own shoulders. It is imperative that a question so innocuous to their day to day did not become a fissure in their future interactions. Spock has no plans or desires to ever leave Jim’s side and would certainly not allow it over such a small human thing like embarrassment.

“Very well,” Jim concedes, as if he too understood the importance of letting it go.

They wait in silence for a while longer, with Jim injured there is no way to move, and aside from the dust there are no threats. Still, the dust clings, and Jim is still covered in it.

“Captain,” Spock addresses him with an appropriate level of professionalism.

“Yes, Spock?” Jim smiles, his arm is wrapped around his chest, holding his ribs cautiously, and Spock wishes he had not stood up, had not allowed Jim to lose whatever comfort he’d found leaning in against his side.

“I believe the dust is the cause of our current honesty,”

“I agree.”

“and as such I would like to- it would be best-” Spock stalls, then pushes on past the niggle of emotion choking him up. “Excuse me, Captain,” he says instead, promptly kneels beside Jim, and with quick efficiency sweeps aside the majority of the substance. He is aware of his fingers, Jim’s clothes, everywhere that he touches the other man. He is always aware, but in light of the things that have slipped past their own guards Spock feels each touch as a burst of sensation at each fingertip.

Jim watches him closely, too closely, and when Spock reaches up to brush the dust from his hair Jim tilts his head back so that he can stare directly in Spock’s face.

“It is, without a doubt, the highest pleasure to have your company, Mr Spock,” he says boldly. Spock flushes a light green but finishes his task before leaning back to put some distance between their faces.

“It is my greatest honour to serve with you, Jim,” he says back just as bravely. “When we have returned to the Enterprise and have both been cleared by Dr McCoy I intend to reflect more on what has occurred today.” Then with more clarity he says, “I hope you will join me.”

“That would also be my pleasure, Spock.” Jim agrees sweetly and Spock feels something untangle inside himself, something he hadn’t realised was knotted at all. He does not question it, only enjoys it, as they wait for communications to come back online.


End file.
